2004 Environment Award Laureate
Dr. Kenneth Owens, Jr. & Paul Burgess
| Laureate Country: United States |
| Website: www.humboldt.edu/~kdo10/demining.html |
| Video: 2004Videos/owens_burgess.mov |
Project Overview: Dr. Kenneth Owens, Jr. and Paul Burgess provide technical solutions to environmental problems. Their long-term goal is to establish a business that brings these solutions to market while providing job opportunities for talented graduates of Humboldt State University in order to foster economic growth in their local community.
Problem Addressed: Mine-clearing is commonly done by hand, resulting in dangerous, high-cost cleanup operations. Typical robotic mine-clearing vehicles are remotely controlled by a human operator resulting in less risk to human life, but an increase in missed mines due to human error. Their is a need for robotic mine-clearing vehicles equipped with systems which eliminate human error while precisely monitoring and recording the ground cleared.
Technology Solution: Dr. Kenneth Owens, Jr. and Paul Burgess developed a system using global positioning and inertial navigation technologies in conjuction with custom JAVA software to autonomously guide a robotic mine-clearing vehicle through a minefield. The software precisely displays and records the area covered by the robot's demining apparatus in real-time to a desired tolerance level using a custom statistical algorithm.
